Although the theoretical importance of the concept of social exchange is well established in the social sciences, and although major theories of social exchange explicitly recognize the critical importance of trust for the development and maintenance of social exchange relations, empirical research directly relevant to the role of trust in social exchange processes remains scanty. A major reason has been the lack of an efficient research paradigm for studying trust in social exchange relations. A procedure is proposed which allows both the level and symmetry of trust to be continuously monitored across time and experimental treatments in an ongoing dyadic social exchange relation. The procedure also provides for the assessment of the dyad's relative $ preference for social exchange compared with independent work and the efficiency of their exchange behavior. The procedure, which promises to be more informative than those currently available, will be used to investigate: (1) the effects of certain situational variables on the development and maintenance of trust in social exchange relations; (2) the properties of manipulations designed to increase trust; and (3) how the existing level or symmetry of trust within a dyad may moderate the effects of other events on the maintenance of social exchange.